I lowered the debate

Okay, so I picked a fight with Andrew Breitbart over his Big Hollywood blog and it turned into a big, ugly mess. While I still revile the blog's premise (Hollywood makes people liberal/stupid) and the opinions expressed over there, I should not have used personal attacks against Andrew to make my point.

I wrote in an earlier post that Andrew used to hang with a "rich/druggy crowd" in high school and often seemed high. Breitbart has commented repeatedly on this blog that this is false. I take him at his word, and have amended that post with a notation that Breitbart disputes my recollection.

More important, none of this germane to the debate. While I certainly grabbed people's attention, I took the low road. And I regret it.

What triggered my visceral response to Breitbart and his blog in the first place? I guess that when I connected the kid I knew in our privileged, predominantly white high school with the promoter of the me-first, screw-everybody-else-values of the internet right, I was stunned. What really pushed me over the edge, though, is the increasingly anti-Muslim bent on Big Hollywood. Although I realize that the Republican party as a whole is sort of devolving into fringe group united mainly by their animosity toward Arabs and "Muslins", bigotry really fucking bothers me.

So I lashed out. I took a cheap shot and started the net equivalent of a barroom brawl. And in the end I didn't like being in a personal war with some distant figure from my past.

So, Breitbart, while I still wholeheartedly disagree with the opinions expressed in your website, I am sorry I made it personal. That was an unnecessary distraction and a mistake that I won't repeat.

- Bryan